An Angel To Die
by fictionfandomaniac
Summary: One-shot. Ithuriel tells the story of how he was imprisoned on Earth twice, with two very different masters.


**Disclaimer. These characters belong to Cassandra Clare**

Greetings,

Many times I have heard my brethren discuss the Nephilim. They are spoken of as heroes, who follow their divine mandate to rid the world of evil. And Downworlders, the unruly citizens of the world, who do nothing but stir up trouble and must be contained.

But I know what my brother's do not. For twice I have been imprisoned on this cold and cruel place you humans praise so highly. Two times, with two very different masters.

One, John Thaddeus Shade, was a warlock who imprisoned me inside an angel made of clockwork. And the other, Valentine Morgenstern, was a Shadowhunter who kept me in his own cellar. And, on the contrary to what my brothers think, the Downworlder treated me better than the Nephilim.

For I was imprisoned, but not tortured. Used, but not spent. I know that Shade intended to give my spirit to his wife, so that I could protect her. But before his project (me) was perfected, he was killed. By whom? None less than your precious Nephilim. And for what offense? Attempting to create life out of clockwork. And also, indirectly, for adopting a human child and loving him as a son. Let that show you what Shadowhunters are truly like.

But something went wrong in the raid. The son, Axel, escaped. I am told that the people under the hill helped him. I was left behind, trapped in this body of gears and cogs.

I thought for sure that I was done for, but years later, Axel found me and finished the work his father had started so many years before. But instead of keeping me himself, he presented the necklace as a gift to Adele Starkweather, or as she called herself, Elizabeth Gray. At first I thought Axel meant for me to protect the woman, for an unmarked Shadowhunter can be very valuable indeed.

Axel however, had already realized this and set a plan in motion. Elizabeth was carrying a warlock child, sired by herself and an Eidolon demon, one of the foulest types. It was the child I was meant to protect, for she wasn't a regular warlock. She wore no warlock's mark, and I knew even then that Axel planned for her to be the ruin of the Nephilim.

The child was born, and she was called Teresa Gray, and she knew nothing of what was waiting for her.

Her first 17 years were spent in blissful ignorance. She grew up to be a normal teenage girl, worrying about clothes and men. That is, until her aunt died.

Teresa, or Tessa as she was then known, journeyed to England, where she was captured by two warlocks in service of Axel, who called himself the Magister. They meant to train her, mold her into the perfect weapon. It was supposed to be a fail-safe plan. But Tessa refused to play according to the rules. She slunk through his fingers, and through a series of rather odd events, came to the London Institute where she befriended the Nephilim.

Tessa and her new accomplices set out to untangle the web the Magister had woven about himself, and destroy the clockwork creatures Axel had created, using the ideas of his father. It was a fateful quest, and many times Tessa's life was in danger. She would have died several times, if not for me. Her own guardian angel.

Teresa was one of the most sympathetic inhabitants of the Earth I had ever met. And to think she was only a filthy demon abomination, to quote my brothers.

After several attempts, the Magister finally managed to kidnap Tessa. He bought her to Cadair Idris, a mountain in Wales. There, he finally told her of his plan, and her part in it. Axel also revealed my true identity, an angel of heaven.

Quite understandably, she was horror-struck and disgusted. Less understandably, however, she tried to destroy her clockwork angel (me), who had so far only protected her. That was when I showed myself to her, and told her of my mission, and that I did not, and never had blamed her for my imprisonment. After that she saw reason, and ceased her attempts to unmake me.

My final part in her destiny came when she (rather foolishly) attempted to change. Into me. An angel of the divine.

She destroyed her enemies, and very nearly herself. I could have just let her die, and return to heaven. But I didn't. My final act before returning to my rightful home was to protect her, from herself, and the heavenly fire that blazed through her bones. Then I cut my last bonds from my miserable existence, and returned to Heaven, never to return. Or so I thought.

For I was imprisoned again, bound to the service of my Nephilim master, Valentine Morgenstern. His last name contained terrible irony. For Morgenstern means morning star, which is simply another name for Lucifer. And I have a hard time believing that Lucifer himself could have treated me any worse than Valentine did.

For in contrast to Shade, Valentine both tortured me and spent me. At first, the only thing he wanted was answers. Answers about the Mortal Instruments, in particular the Mortal Mirror, which is obviously Lake Lyn. Any Nephilim that actually stopped to think could have figured that out. But Valentine relied more on brute force and torture than wisdom. And torture me he did. He pulled feathers from my wings, so roughly that I wept with pain. His whip cut bloody marks across my back, and his knife slit my wrists. He was good at that, Valentine, pushing something to the very brink of death without actually killing them. But no matter how much he wounded me, my mouth stayed shut. I would rather die than betray the secrets of heaven to any mortal, much less a murderous lunatic.

I hoped, that when Valentine realized pressing me for answers was useless, he would let me go, or at least kill me. That seemed like mercy at this point.

But, as mad as he was, Valentine was also a strategist. He found other uses for me, or, more specifically, my blood. Angel blood has magical properties, like happiness and health. And he used that. I was just another of his many experiments.

And then he had an idea. Valentine fed my blood to a pregnant woman, Celine Herondale, to observe the effects. Unfortunately, Celine committed suicide before she could give birth. But, resourceful as he was, Valentine cut the child out of her womb, and raised him as his own. For a child with angel blood is valuable indeed.

It was around this time that I received knowledge of his other little...project. He had fed his pregnant wife Jocelyn demon blood, and she had given birth to a boy with black, black eyes. A child that neither cried nor slept.

If a baby with angel blood is unusual, one with demon blood is practically an abomination. And Jocelyn realized this. She tried to bring herself to kill the baby, but found that she couldn't. This drove her into a depression. And Valentine, oblivious to the fact that Jocelyn was pregnant a second time, fed my blood to her, in hopes that it would make her better. For if Valentine ever loved anything, it was his wife. But his feelings were not returned.

Not wanting to give Valentine access to her second child, Jocelyn stole the Mortal Cup, which was in her husband's possession, and fled into the night.

Jocelyn wished for her child to have a life away from the Shadow World, so Clarissa, just as Teresa, grew up oblivious to her destiny.

But it is hard to keep a Shadowhunter from her fate. And when Jocelyn learned that Valentine was alive and searching for her, she wanted to flee. But Valentine caught her first.

Clarissa, or Clary, found protection with the Nephilim, just like Tessa. They helped her in search for her mother and the Mortal Cup, which Jocelyn had hidden.

All this time, I kept careful watch over the girl with my blood. Strange as it was, she appeared attracted to the only other person who shared her blessing: Jace Herondale, or as he was then known, Jace Wayland.

But while Jace received heightened strength and speed through my blood, Clarissa's gift lay elsewhere. For she had the unique ability to, with a little help from visions I managed to send her, create new runes that weren't in the Grey Book.

As it happened, Clary found herself in Idris a few months later. And, by request from a warlock named Magnus Bane, she travelled to the abandoned Wayland manor, where Jace had grown up and I had been imprisoned.

Resourceful as she was, Clarissa managed to find me. After I had spoken to her, and shown her a few visions, she let me die, and I was finally, finally, free.

So you see, I have had two masters, and of them, the Downworlder was by far the kindest.

Ave,

Ithuriel


End file.
